KYKOTSMOVI - One young mother looked to the experiences of another generation of women in her Hopi village when considering housing for her own growing family. Lillian Hill was about 12 years old when her family moved into a HUD demonstration Hopi home-and her mother immediately noticed problems. She was not alone-the other 14 women also discovered serious structural and electrical problems.

"These demonstration homes featured a frame wall with stone veneer over plywood," Hill said in an interview on Aug. 29. "The women-mostly single mothers-had expected homes designed with conventional Hopi architectural features-and that's why the homes had the stones and the vigas and other features."

Serious structural and electrical flaws led to the homes being evaluated, Hill said, and it was quickly determined that it would cost more to renovate the homes than the homes were worth. The houses were condemned-and all but one has been demolished.

A series of scoping meetings followed that led to more trouble at Kykotsmovi, and now Hill's mother lives in a trailer in front of her old HUD house.

This history has had quite an impact on Hill-who is now a mother with her own children to consider.

"I always wanted a stone house," Hill said. "But then I learned about cob construction. Many of us at Hopi do not have a lot of money, and I learned that this was a very affordable way to build a house. We are all concerned about natural resources and the land here, and cob building is natural."

Hill was walking downtown one day and noticed a flyer for a cob architecture training in Mexico.

"I went onto the Internet and looked up the company-the Cob Cottage Company-and went to Oregon to take a course," Hill said. "People always think that because Jacobo [Marcus Carranza, Hill's companion] is Hispanic, that is why I chose to build a cob house. But it's not, it's because I took that class in Oregon."

Cob is similar to adobe-hence the idea that Carranza was the inspiration for Hill's dream house.

"I tell people this, and they are like, 'okay, sure,'" Lillian laughed "It's funny-they are creating their own histories of this house."

An important factor to Hill is that anyone-man, woman or child-can do cob work.

"I am building this home along with young children," Hill is fond of saying. "If I can do it, anyone can."

Cob isn't for every environment-but the earth at Hill's village home site is perfect for the process.

The process is similar to adobe in that clay or sand is used, but cob includes a higher percentage of straw. Further, the material is not formed into bricks or blocks. Instead, it is mixed by bare feet. Hill and her friends have mixed the cob on top of a layer of common blue tarps seen everywhere on the reservation. Even when expecting her twins, Hill delighted in joining local youth in mixing the material-and often more than feet became covered with the mixture.

The mixture is then passed by hand in large gobs - or cobs - and formed into freeform walls that can be very artistically arranged.

Hill and Carranza began work on the house in April of 2003, and though the process has been slower than she would like, Hill's only regret in her choice of building material is that she hasn't had more time to devote to the structure-and it is too cold to work on the house in the winter. But she allows that the process has been easy, and she and Carranza expect to move their family into their new home in the spring of 2008.

"We have had other families express an interest in cob building," Hill said. "We've taught about 16 workshops here at Hopi since we started the house, and we've trained 150 to 200 people.

Hill and Carranza also direct the Hopi Tutskwa Permaculture Program, which includes a summer youth leadership program.

"Our Tutskwa program partnered with another Hopi youth group, Truthful, and we've trained the youth to make bread ovens and benches.

Now they are spread out across Hopi, working on their own projects. A lot of people want to build small structures like piki houses, tool sheds and courtyard walls."

The earth at Hopi, Hill said, is pure sand, so it is necessary to add clay-one and a half parts to three parts sand-and then the straw.

"All of the little ones want to learn how to do things," Hill continued. "I was brought up with a lot of values and teachings," Hill said. "There is so much going on, so many things people are doing here at Hopi-like dry farming, natural building techniques, the re-establishment of gardens and passing on Hopi ecological knowledge.

It is possible to create cob through mechanized methods-such as the use of a backhoe-but that diminishes the organic flavor that individuals like Hill and Carranza hunger for.

The cob house that children have helped build is quite insulating, and will be comfortable even in extreme temperatures.

Hill's home includes Hopi features such as benches that run along the walls similar to those one would find in a kiva-and also features an impressive hardwood loft.

Cob is considered an earthen building technique, and mankind has lived in earthen homes for over 9,000 years now-with one third of the world population living in earthen homes.

Cob building techniques were common in England, Scotland and Wales in the 1900s, and many of these homes are still standing.

Earthen building processes are cheap, environmentally sound, and recyclable.

Cob can be made thick enough to bear the load of a roof, obviously, and Hill's home is big enough for family comfort without being so big as to ignore the close-knit, serviceable homes of the Hopi people.

One of Hill's primary goals is to help bring sustainability back to the Hopi people.

"One could provide him or herself with an income doing this if they became skilled at it," Hill said. "When we did some of our workshops, we did charge people from outside the reservation to attend, but our main interest is in teaching our people to build homes to be self-sufficient and use local resources."

Comments

Comments are not posted immediately. Submissions must adhere to our Use of Service Terms of Use agreement. Rambling or nonsensical comments may not be posted. Comment submissions may not exceed a 200 word limit, and in order for us to reasonably manage this feature we may limit excessive comment entries.